FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT AARON JAY KERNIS - PAGE 2

Having had everything from trombone arrangements to Alan Alda movies inflicted on it in the last two decades--and with at least 85 recordings currently available--one would think it nearly impossible these days that any musician could find anything fresh and illuminating in yet another performance of Antonio Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons." Au contraire. In his remarkable performance Sunday night at Orchestra Hall with Hugh Wolff and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the young Israeli-American violinist Gil Shaham made Vivaldi's famed work appear newly minted, stripping away years of lazy and mediocre readings just as centuries of grime are scraped away from old paintings to reveal previously hidden details.

Classical music: Actor Andre De Shields will narrate the Peabody Trio's local premiere of "The Four Seasons of Futurist Cuisine" by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis in the trio's concert at 8 p.m. Friday in Mandel Hall, University of Chicago. Works by Schumann and Beethoven also included. Phone: 773-702-8068. -- John von Rhein Rock: Chicago's emergence as a mecca for innovative hip-hop is affirmed by a local showcase Tuesday at Double Door featuring five top-notch local crews, none more lethal than headliners All Natural.

Jacob Druckman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, teacher and conductor who, through his work as a consultant to major symphony orchestras and a president of foundations, became an influential proponent of contemporary music, died Friday in New Haven, Conn. He was 67 and lived in Milford, Conn. The cause was lung cancer, said his wife, Muriel Topaz Druckman. Although he spent most of his career teaching at universities, most notably the Yale School of Music, there was little that could be called academic about Mr. Druckman's music.

The idiomatic authority that Carlos Kalmar (the Uruguayan-born Austrian principal conductor of the Grant Park Orchestra) brings to American music puts the comparatively half-hearted efforts of many a native son to shame. For the last couple of years Cedille Records producer James Ginsburg has been devising worthwhile American projects for Kalmar and his ensemble, and this new CD is their latest, holding first recordings of six recent American symphonic scores. It is a winner. The most deeply affecting piece, to my ears, is Aaron Jay Kernis' "Sarabanda in Memoriam" (2003)

The Grant Park Music Festival has moved ever further in recent years to making its symphonic offerings more accessible to greater numbers of listeners. This summer, the nation's only free, municipally funded classical music festival will present its most eclectic season yet of symphonic and popular events under the stars. The 61st season of concerts by the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, June 14 to Aug. 18, will mix Beethoven and Hannibal Lokumbe, Prokofiev and Poi Dog Pondering, classic film and classic jazz, among other attractions.

Why a Grant Park Symphony concert of Mozart and Sibelius should require more aerial surveillance than the Branch Davidians is anybody's guess. Fortunately, despite the best efforts of a very noisy, low-flying Channel 7 helicopter and other aircraft-borne boors to disrupt Wednesday evening's concert by flying directly over the Petrillo Music Shell, the talent and professionalism of conductor Hugh Wolff and his players managed to keep the focus...

The devastating events of September have brought forth many different responses from classical musicians but few as heartfelt as the Fulcrum Point New Music Project's third annual Candlelight Concert, presented by Performing Arts Chicago Tuesday at St. James Cathedral. Artistic director and conductor Stephen Burns originally had planned to build his holiday program around music inspired by the spiritual traditions of Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism. But Sept. 11 intervened and Burns felt the occasion called for a more inclusive and consoling program.

Bang on a Can All-Stars: The New-York-based virtuosos of new music perform one of their signature pieces, Brian Eno's "Music for Airports," along with works by co-founders Michael Gordon and Evan Ziporyn, Conlon Nancarrow and others. 8 p.m. Thursday at Wentz Concert Hall, North Central College, 171 E. Chicago Ave., Naperville; $5, $3 for seniors; 630-637-7469, tickets.noctrl.edu Chicago Chamber Musicians: The group welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis to its "Composer Perspectives" series.

Fulcrum Point New Music Project's annual "Concert for Peace" usually takes place at year's end, but the 10th anniversary of 9/11 prompted artistic director Stephen Burns to schedule the event on Sunday afternoon, and a good idea it was. Listeners at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance heard consolatory selections in varying styles interleaved with invocations, prayers and lessons from the Buddhist, Christian, Islamic and Jewish faiths....

The Grant Park Orchestra and Grant Park Chorus led a nomadic life last week, as they are obliged to do whenever they are displaced from their summer home by the Taste of Chicago's hungry hordes. But over the weekend one had only to venture a few steps from the Pritzker Pavilion to catch the orchestra indoors at the Harris Music and Dance Theater. A couple of nights earlier the chorus migrated to Holy Family Church, in the UIC area, for a program of accompanied and unaccompanied choral works.